The Mariners project was delighted to welcome Advisory Board members to Bristol on 4 September. The Board consists of leading marine historians, archivists and community leaders:
- Claire Weatherall, Hull History Centre, is a trained archivist who has completed the catalogue of the archives of the Mission to Seafarers
- Brad Beaven, University of Portsmouth, is a leading marine historian with a special interest in the history of British ports;
- Aaron Jaffer, Royal Museums Greenwich is a leading authority on the history of lascars;
- Asif Shakoor is a community historian whose family were employed on lascar contracts in the British mercantile marine.
In the morning the Bristol team of Lucy Wray, Jess Kirkby, Sumita Mukherjee, Mani Dutta, and Hilary Carey briefed the Advisory Board on progress since the project began on 1 October 2022. We were able to report that the website was on track for release in November, which will be the major milestone for the first stage of the project. All team members have also been contributing regularly to the project blog, which is shaping up as a great window to the evolution of the project.
We then headed down to the floating harbour for lunch in the Grain Barge where there was more chat and debriefing about the directions of the project. We are very grateful to Evan Jones, one of the leading authorities on the history of Bristol and Bristol Harbour, who took us on a superb walking tour of Bristol, pointing out key elements in the city’s port history, and ending up at Bristol Bridge where the medieval city began.
On the way we paused outside the badly damaged site of the former Bristol Missions to Seafarers in Prince’s Street, and the rather more salubrious Seaman’s Home in Queen Square. We look forward to our next Advisory Board meeting which will be in six months time.
